Yves Klein used naked women as ‘human paintbrushes’ to make his Anthropometry paintings, which were produced as elaborate performances in front of an audience. Klein, in bow-tie and suit, would conduct the women as they covered themselves in paint (a colour he patented as ‘International Klein Blue’) and made imprints of their bodies, whilst musicians played his ‘Monotone Symphony’ – a single note played for twenty minutes, followed by twenty minutes of silence.

Yves Klein Anthropometry events were one of the key events in the history of painting and performance A revolutionary moment in art when the artist exposed the making of the painting. They really mark a shift between painting as something that happens on the canvas to artists exposing the making of painting

"Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times." Sigmund Freud